Summary: In this audio, the Center welcomes translators and poets Mary Jo Bang and Graham Foust to read from their latest projects. Foust began by reading from his translations of Ernst Meister, a 20th century German philosopher (co-translated with Samuel Frederick). Meister and rsquo;s poems, Foust notes in the introduction to the book are like Emily Dickinson and rsquo;s in that they and ldquo;at once entice and irritate the mouth and the mind. and rdquo; Translator and poet Mary Jo Bang then took the stage to discuss the genesis of her new translation of The Inferno: she read a poem that consisted of 47 previous translations of three lines from Dante. She began to think about how she would translate the lines, which led her to ponder the idea of what a full translation of Dante would look like. Bang than read her rendition of the famous meeting scene between Dante and the poet Virgil, moving on to Dante's account of how he left limbo.
